Bitcoin (BTC) grabbed many of the headlines in last year, but right now it only represents 36 percent of the cryptocurrency market, according to Coinmarketcap. These are some of the bitcoin alternatives that are going to blow up this year.

Many of the coins these bitcoin alternatives outperformed bitcoin in terms of price rises last year – priming them to go mainstream in 2018.

Ripple’s rise

Ripple usurped Ethereum as the second largest cryptocurrency as international banks announced they would trial payment systems with it.

Ripple capped an annual rise of more than 36,000 percent, doubling in price in the last week of December.

Ripple markets itself as a cross-border payments solution for large financial institutions, rooted in blockchain technology.

Currently, an international payment may take a few days to complete, and at a high cost.

A headache for banks is high-volume, but low-value, transactions.

These can often be expensive and unprofitable for banks because it takes a lot of effort to move the money and the percentage cut won’t be as high as for a larger transaction. Ripple is trying to solve this problem via its technology.

Ripple has been conducting trials with a number of financial institutions, including American Express and Santander.

3 Things That Will Change the World Today

Get the Verdict morning email

Ethereum

Ethereum, the third largest cryptocurrency, profited from bitcoin’s success in 2017, as successful bitcoin investors reinvested in other cryptocurrencies and the Ethereum platform saw many initial coin offerings (ICO) successfully launched.

Companies used Ethereum’s platform to create derivative tokens with relative value to ether in an ICO. This functionality had borne little fruit until then.

But as more companies experienced successful ICOs on Ethereum’s platform, momentum accelerated.

Bitcoin helped to bring new money into the industry, and these younger companies benefited immensely from this cash injection.

The mania that helped bitcoin achieve a price tag of just under $20,000 contributed to the other, cheaper coins available on the same exchanges.

Ethereum is listed right alongside bitcoin, and once new investors entered the market to grasp the tail end of these gains, they spread their money between the year’s top earners.

Bitcoin Cash

A split in the bitcoin network led to the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which although initially grew rapidly has settled to become the fourth largest.

The fork in software has a higher block limit, which is hoped will overtake BTC in transaction volume, making it the most popular incarnation of the technology.

However, so far BCH peaked at $4,054.20 in December 2017, and has declined since.

Cryptocurrency remains a highly unpredictable market, and could see new entrants or smaller coins gain traction.

Monero

Monero has been growing in popularity due to its privacy software.

Monero quadrupled in value to $349 in the final two months of 2017, according to coinmarketcap.com, placing it among a number of upstart coins that rose faster than bitcoin, which approximately doubled in the same period.

Monero encrypts the recipient’s address on its blockchain and generates fake addresses to obscure the real sender.